Michael Goldstein
Teenage entrepreneur from Toronto
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Michael Goldstein (born 2011) is a teenage entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada, who was the youngest attendee at Founders, Inc.'s Off Season I Demo Day in August 2025.13 He built Flowe AI, a general-purpose AI automation agent, at age 13, and later founded Kodo, an AI-powered design platform that launched on Product Hunt in March 2026.210 The San Francisco Standard profiled him in October 2025 under the headline "Meet the 13-year-old looking to cash in on the AI boom."1
Goldstein began building hardware as a child: at age eight he attempted to construct a drone from DC motors, and in fifth grade he built a solar panel charger that could power phones.2 At ten he started a slime business that secured placement in two Toronto retail stores.2 At eleven he tried dropshipping and ran a YouTube channel that reached 7,000 subscribers and generated $86 in revenue.2
In 2024, Goldstein and three friends — Ilan Kagedan, Michael "Misha" Vishnever, and Brady Sonshine — began launching weather balloons from Toronto.135 After five failed attempts, they successfully sent a balloon to 50,000 feet during the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse, capturing footage that CNN published in its eclipse photo coverage.52 A second launch in May 2024 reached 100,000 feet.2 The group briefly ran a near-space product launch business based on the balloon platform.2
Goldstein launched Flowe AI in February 2025 as a general-purpose AI agent that automated tasks including email composition and PowerPoint creation.2812 He built it with no prior coding experience, having started teaching himself to code in April 2025 through YouTube tutorials and the AI coding tool Cursor.21 He described his approach as "vibe coding" and told the San Francisco Standard that he could "only half-code."1
The Flowe AI launch video accumulated over 200,000 views and 1,000 likes on social media.2 The product reached roughly 1,000 users.2 An EO Studio interview featured Goldstein describing his daily routine of eight-hour work sessions building the agent after school.76
Goldstein applied to Y Combinator with Flowe AI and was rejected.2 He also applied to ODF and to Founders, Inc., which accepted him.2 The acceptance came after f.inc co-founder Ruslan saw the Flowe AI launch video and reached out by direct message; Hubert Thieblot followed up with a phone call.2
Goldstein joined Off Season I at Founders, Inc.'s Fort Mason campus in the summer of 2025, attending for approximately one week after finishing overnight camp.12 The San Francisco Standard reported that legal restrictions prevented him from staying longer, as a longer stay would have required the program to register as a daycare facility.11 At 13, he was the youngest participant at the Demo Day on August 1, 2025.31
During his week in San Francisco, Goldstein cold-emailed Sam Altman's assistant to say he would be pitching at the Founders Inc. Demo Day at Fort Mason on August 1.1 Altman's assistant invited him to visit OpenAI headquarters, where he received a tour and spoke with Altman in his office.1 Goldstein asked Altman when to quit a startup; Altman replied, "When you don't want to work on it anymore."1 Goldstein also told Altman he was running out of money and asked how much funding to seek; Altman told him "to ask a16z for a $100,000 investment."1
He also cold-emailed 75 OpenAI engineers during the trip, visited Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Cluely's headquarters, and connected with other founders he had previously only known online.3 The San Francisco Standard reported that he did not secure investment from a16z at the time, though a January 2026 follow-up article stated he had received a $20,000 grant from a16z.111
Goldstein posted about the experience on X on September 22, 2025: "I'm 13. Last month I spent a week in San Francisco for Founders Inc's off-season. In 7 days I: was the youngest at demo day, visited a16z & Cluely HQ, met founders I'd only seen online, went viral cold-emailing 75 OpenAI engineers and ended up in Sam Altman's office."3 The post received 594 likes and 214 bookmarks.3
In September 2025, Goldstein pivoted from Flowe AI to a new project called Neatly, which he described as "a computer-use agent teammate with its own cursor."4 He wrote on LinkedIn that he built it without validating the idea first: "I didn't know much about computer-use agents at the time, but I kept going anyway."4 After two months, he concluded that current large language models could not execute his vision as designed.4 He publicly described the experience as "pivot hell" and asked for advice on whether to raise capital to train a custom vision model or abandon the project entirely.4
Goldstein ultimately moved on to Kodo, an AI-powered design platform that generates fully editable vector designs — posters, slides, social media graphics, and menus — from text prompts.210 He positioned Kodo as a free alternative to Figma and Canva, with the tagline "design at the speed of thought."29 The platform uses Anthropic's Claude to power its AI generation.10 Kodo launched on Product Hunt on March 4, 2026, ranking number three Product of the Day with a launch score of 387.109 The San Francisco Standard profiled him again in January 2026 as part of a feature on young AI founders, describing Kodo as "a Canva-Figma baby with AI."11